Common Yoga Misconceptions

Yoga is a very popular form of exercising and spiritual balancing.

But it is often understood by a lot of people.

This is almost inevitable when you consider the incredible popularity of Yoga as a discipline and different strands it has.

Quite often people have experience with one type of Yoga.

But not another, and as such they will base their overall impression of Yoga on what they have seen.

It is like people basing their impression on Germans on the most famous German they know - Adolf Hitler, or more recently the portrayal of George Bush internationally as the only example of an American anyone knows.

The truth is that Yoga can be very different depending on who you learn it from and how they perceive Yoga.

This article looks at the common misconceptions.

1. Yoga Is A Form Of Exercise

Yes, yoga is but so is walking.

I can walk from my couch to my table and I can hardly claim to have done my exercise for the day.

The truth is that exercise is just the beginning of what yoga is.

It is closer to a combination of exercise, physiotherapy, psychology and spirituality all rolled into one.

As you come to master yoga, you will need to become stronger mentally and most importantly disciplined.

If you can discipline yourself to do regular yoga sessions, then you will naturally make progress.

For some people, this transcends to a spiritual level because they are so efficient and clearing their thoughts while meditating.

2. Yoga Is For Hippies

As previously mentioned, yoga can be a very spiritual experience.

That is if you become good enough at clearing your thoughts and concentrating whilst performing the exercises.

But you certainly do not have to begin with any spiritual belief.

Yoga believes in aligning the body and the mind and the spirit through achieving inner balance.

What that means to you is probably going to depend entirely on what your beliefs already are.

For some people, it will be a spiritually freeing experience.

For others, it will be an effective way of distressing and achieving a level of calmness of thought.

Still others will claim that these things are one and the same.

3. Yoga Is A Fad

Recently there have been some very hyped-up Yoga courses making big claims about what Yoga can achieve.

These are easy to associate with other 'fad' exercise crazes.

However, yoga is not something new and is based in documents that are hundreds of years old which describe exercises and poses that were probably being performed for generations before that.

An individual style of Yoga may come and go.

But so long as people are still stretching before a game of football then yoga will still be being used.

4. Yoga Is Too Slow To Help Me Lose Weight And Gain Tone Etc

This one is way off the mark.

But we have been constantly told that weight loss and toning our body is all about spending hours in the gym and fast high impact exercise.

That is simply not true.

Yoga can help with weight loss and in particularly toning for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the exercises, while low impact and performed either statically or slowly - are still exercises.

While you use them you are using your muscles, and in many cases ,you are using muscles and muscle groups that regular exercise programs ignore.

The second way that yoga can be of benefit in a weight loss program is that it will increase your mental strength and allow you to be more disciplined with your food consumption.

When it comes down to it excess weight is a result of excess eating and not enough physical exercise to burn off those calories.

Have you ever noticed how some people can eat donut after donut and not put on any weight at all?

It seems unfair.

But it is a natural result of their body state.

Usually, these people will be quite sinewy and this muscle allows them the metabolise food faster.

That is the third benefit of yoga in weight loss.

Especially as your muscles develop, your body will actually become more efficient at consuming foods and processing them into nutrients and waste.

Hopefully we have now gone some way to explaining away the various myths associated with Yoga.

It is such a broad topic that it is very much a case of yoga being what you make of it.

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